Post-Cold War Champions 2016

A Thorn in Your Side

22

MAR/16

Four days after the Tech Noir event (Tuesday morning), the team gets a call to hurry over to base as they are needed to take care of some environmental terrorists whose antics have caused a cave-in at a site. Workers are trapped underground and rescue crews can’t get to them until the terrorists have been dealt with.

The terrorists include Blitz, Thorn, and Bulldozer. They are here because of the recent activity digging up the site when it should be closed down as it’s a Superfund site (14501 LAVACAPMINEROAD, NEVADACITY, CA 95959).Thorn and Bulldozer are livid, Blitz is just there to get paid and has been hoping to run into Kinetic for some payback.

The PCs subdue the 3 and rescue the miners. Supermax is contacted to come pick them up, but the head honchos from Sandstorm show up first in their helicopter. When confronted about why their people are at a Superfund site, they claim they are doing remediation – nothing to see here, folks.

Supermax shows up not long after with their cryo-vats to take the 3 SPBs away. They wait for the PCs to leave, but when they don’t there’s some quick discussion amongst the Supermax employees and they are seen rounding up the miners and herding them into the Supermax chopper. One or two of the miners try to walk away but are forcibly restrained and walked into the chopper.

The PCs won’t stand for that and get in their way. Although one of the guards tries to intimidate Rebecca, he doesn’t have a chance with nothing more than his size and a baton. The guards let the miners go, while the PCs wait for them to head to their cars and leave and for Supermax to leave the area with the 3 SPBs they came for.

Sandstorm Engineering personnel (Paul, Eric) are alerted to the situation with Thorn and the others and are on their way to the site for “damage control” and to make sure Vanguard doesn’t get too interested in what’s going on here. Thorn, however, has already spilled the beans. He started monologuing during the fight, telling anyone who would stop to listen about how the soil here was being carted away to be used to construct the new prison and how three recent SPB parolees from Supermax ended up dead not long after they were released. Thorn’s ravings end abruptly as he remembers there are SPBs here to stop what he started and he resumes his attack.

When the team gets back to HQ, they start looking to see if what Thorn was saying had any merit. They learn that George Bennett, parole board director at Supermax, signed the release, and used to live in Texas in 1993, around age 55, started working for Supermax in 2003. He lives in Santa Cruz. They find sun/flame crest on his house. Ed Johnson & Frank Dobbs are also on the parole board.

The SPBs Thorn mentioned were released 3 months ago and all died within 3 days. PCs have asked Vanguard to get additional info on the SPBs who died. Official autopsy reports will show that none showed defensive wounds of any kind. One apparently died of what looked like a self-inflicted wound (mental/emotional powers), though the first shot grazed his head. The weapon used was manufactured in Texas in 1989. The other two (both strong characters) died from what appears to be a blade inserted into the base of their skulls. No weapon was ever found. The man who died of the gunshot wound also had a wound at the base of his skull, but it was not the cause of death.